I wrote to 4 news to complain about their running the story and told them to leave you alone (although the story could really work to your benefit). I also told them that my wife and I will never watch 4 news again because of their pandering to a political agenda.

my god, that was a boring lecture! can't you just put up more scandalous pictures and we can react to them? who wants to think on the internet?

At sixty one years of age and living on the East Coast (NY, Phila), I have pretty much seen and heard about as much as I care to.

Until, that is, the story about you....

First, screw the media. Most, if given a news- worthy story, would not know what to do, or where to go with it if they had a map.

With regard to those USC students who you say are attacking you ... Chances are they're frustrated because "you got it" and they don't.

From what I have seen and read on your site, while you are a bit deep for my taste, you do know what you're takling about and you have your act together.

You also know what you want ... and that, dear lady, very few can claim.

Nice to meet you, kind sir. Yes, tragically, I am "deep." It terrified my mom as she correctly thought it would frighten the boys. But I have found the most excellent ones, far from being intimidated, are mad about me. Thank you for the support.

Right on Dr. Diana, It wasn't a "scandal" until the news media and all the zombified lemmings made it a scandal. I didn't hear it on the news yesterday, but low and behold it's a front page blurb on their website this morning. Keep on training tomorrow’s leaders to be free thinkers.

Dear Doc,

I am afraid, yes, I did come to see the naked pics but I stayed to read your blog and the description of your lecture. I would suggest you being disingenuous. Scandal might be used as a 'reactionary tool' to 'suppress' but equally it may be used as a 'proactive tool' to 'disrupt'. Manet's 'Dejeuner sur l'herbe' is a good example of this. So, I ask you, what was your motive as a femme d'une age, an academic working with young people, someone enjoying a certain standing in the community - whether you accept the standing or the community or not - in posting pictures of yourself with bared breats on the Internet? What were you thinking? With whom were you communicating? What were you trying to tell them? I really am not asking in order to condemn (my interest in the pics was prurient from the outset) but just out of random interest.

Yours aye,

AC

Dr. Diana,

I love how you think. You are refreshing.

"What were you thinking? With whom were you communicating? What were you trying to tell them?" Great questions, Alex, and of course I have answers, for as you can see I am hardly living the unexamined life.

Short story long, I am actively engaged in constructing a self, as we all are, and my issues revolve around an embrace of healthy sexuality, an acceptance and celebration of the (imperfect) female body, an insistence upon self-determination, and a healing of the mind/body split foisted upon us by Descartes and predecessors.

And you're right about scandal cutting both ways. But my ultimate goal is to undermine the supposed disruptive power of the female body by normalizing it. In other words, they're just tits. When are we going to figure that out?

if it makes you feel any better, here at george washington university our human sexuality prof was fired for - gasp - showing porn in a lecture! SHOCK AND AWE!!

maybe if those prats who tattled on you had seen a pair of tits in high school they wouldn't be so intimidated by yours. ;-p

Showing porn in a lecture and fired? Porn is the commodification of the female body. What was the context? What but the use of a person without regard to their person could be the context of porn. If you show pix of Berkenau to pander to racism, you'll get fired for that too.

don't wanna hijack dr. diana's blog, pony, but if you're up for a debate you can email me at aniega at hotmail dot com.

I appreciate your stance, but... well... aren't you the least bit concerned that by putting your naked pictures where students could see them, you may have unwittingly caused a distraction in the learning environment? Do you feel that these pictures may undermine your ability to teach to certain students effectively? Not attacking, just wondering if you've thought about the other side of the issue at all.

Could you explain why you publically stated that all males at USC were complicit in the act of rape? Not attacking, just wondering if you've thought about the other side of the issue at all.

http://cardinalmartini.mu.nu/

Thanks for the invitation but your education in being a human being is your responsibility not mine. My point of view on porn is not debatable. Have a very nice day.

How provocative! I bow to you, Oh scandalous one! :)

I do not think you could do anything "unwittingly"!

how different is your picture from the painting behind you? How can it be described as "porn" ? As you say, it's just tits!

Now, if you were doing "something with them", wouldn't that alter the expression and intent of the pic post?

Wow, you can teach a whole semester on this! :)

Diana,

I admire your ability to turn an attack from ignorant conservative children (yes children, because if they can't handle boobs then they have NOT grown up during their years at USC) into a discussion of American society. There is a reason your students return again and again to your classes and I hope that if anything this will only encourage your enthusiasm in the classroom. I have an urge to post pictures of my own boobies. Do you think they would have the same reaction to a pair of 22 year old tits? Would I get a letter from USC that I could not graduate? Somehow I think they might get passed around fraternity email databases more than viewed on Channel 4 news. You have done nothing wrong and I am rather amused that there are students so threatened by you that they feel the need to attack you like this.

I aspire to be as uninhibited as you are.

Arianna

I have always said "no pain, no gain" is the clarion call of neo-Calvinists. They believed pleasure was the Devil's way to seduce you into engaging in sinful acts. This would include alcohol use as well as sex. The problem is, we now know that pleasurable sensations are God's way of saying "this is good for you." Besides, Science has established that religious folks are usually mentally ill. Hyper-religiousness is a symptom of psychosis. Religion, therefore, is an illness or, at least, a symptom of one. Freud called religious beliefs illusions. I think they're delusions and indicative of a refusal to face reality, esp. the fact of death. What humans have done in the name of their God is horrendous. Torture, murder, and the denial of the pleausre of sex have all been done in the name of religion. Marx was right, religion is an antediluvian anachronism. As Wittgenstein said, it's not even worth discussing. ;)

Heehee, I love you. And I haven't even bothered to find out what you look like naked.

Scandal? hmmmpft!
There are many more scandalous things going on than showing risque pictures on the internet, no matter who is doing the showing.
A bit of a tempest in a teapot, imho.
Your assertions are pretty familiar, at least to meeee. I'm tired of Americans' Puritanical whingeing. Grow up, folks.
My wife and I work very hard to make our kids proud of their bodies and familiar with theirs and ours. No shame, just respect. The Unitarians have a program called Our Whole Lives which works well for this.

Dr. Jim, You're right that the Christians have done their share of murdering and torturing. But they only represent a slice of the evil-pie. Mr. Marx is responsible for an even bigger part via Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot etc. The truth is that the Christians (and the Muslims) had a pretty good monopoly on pre-Enlightenment savagery. Enlightment thinkers pulled Western Civilization out of the darkness for a moment before the Marxists, Kantians, post-modernists, statists etc. dragged us back down, leaving hundreds of millions of corpses in their wake. The socialist left and the religious right both reject reason and liberty, and they are both founded on murderous philosophies.

Good for you -- keep using your "tits" to your advantage. But why stop with breasts? Using your breasts to be, "...actively engaged in constructing a self, as we all are, and my issues revolve around an embrace of healthy sexuality, an acceptance and celebration of the (imperfect) female body, an insistence upon self-determination, and a healing of the mind/body split foisted upon us..." requires a little nonchalant vagina too, don't you think?

But that's all a distraction. Here's my main point that you repeatedly avoid.

In your 4/11/05 letter to the Daily Trojan you wrote, "...I hold every single male on this campus responsible (for rape). Because every single male on this campus has the responsibility for stopping rape. Every fraternity brother, every science major, every professor, every one of them. Because they all rape? Of course not. But because only men rape and only men can stop other men from raping."

In that same letter you also wrote, "... that's only two members of the team accused of rape in the last year. I hear it could be worse. I suppose that's true. After all, every female student who has been violated by a member of the team could come forward. Can you imagine what a public relations nightmare that would be? Fortunately, they are so humiliated and brutalized they satisfy themselves with telling their friends, with telling me, with telling therapists and counselors. He threatened to kill me, they say. He locked me in a closet, they say. He stripped naked in front of me, they say, and tried to stop me from running away."

Shortly after, on this site under "In the Eye of the Shitstorm" you wrote, "And I know more about the recent rape charges than I wish I did. And I know more about what happens to young women on this campus, in their dorm rooms, at parties, on the row, than I wish I did."

So, on multiple occasions I've asked you this, "When women confide in you that they are sexually assaulted, why don't you report it? Why do you keep the secret? Do you want those men to rape again? Or perhaps kill someone? Isn't you silence pro-sexism and rape?" I ask this question to challenge your claim that, "...only men can stop other men from raping."

I also wonder why someone who claims to know what you know about the football team would still go to the games. Or have football photos on your website. I wouldn't, and I'm not even a feminazi. Yet you do. It's absolutely amazing that you don't see the credibility problem here.

You continually have no response. You're above all of that.

You see, DYB, to me it seems that you don't really realize how important feminism is; that you use it as a vehicle to talk esoteric shit and feel good about yourself. And when you spread a veneer of shit over an important message, you lose the message. It's an extreme act of selfishness.

The reason I've challenged you is because I was hoping, over and over again, that you weren't just a dumbass; that you were deeper than I perceived and I had you wrong. But you aren't, and I don't.

If you don't like criticism, then don't have a public opinion (bye bye Daily Trojan).

John speaks the truth about the opposition. Why did you publicly state that all males were complicit in the act of rape? Why do you practice advocacy in the classroom and not academics?

http://cardinalmartini.mu.nu/

I'm a little behind with my American news reading (shocking I know but yesterday I frittered my time away listening to and taping debates on the Afghanistan invasion by American troops instead of following this story--what could I have been thining)...but is this the same university which is the centre of a rape investigation?

I must say, what passes for reportage in them there parts is flipping pathetic.

John, Chairman:

I think you boys need to look up the meaning of the word "complicit." When you've done that, I think you should revisit your own complicity. Are you more concerned with defending the valor of USC by assailing accused rapists, or a defender of rape victims?

You also might want to enroll in a course that teaches rhetoric. I think it would be valuable to learn how to avoid using phrases like “spread a veneer of shit” and words like “dumbass” when purporting to be intellectual.

Talk about a disservice to the university.

Diana,

Congrads to you for so eloquently fighting back. I just came to your site after reading another news blurb on KNSD's website in San Diego. "College Professor causing Concern"

Who is concerned?

Excellent lecture. I am sick to death of this kind of "news" and "concern."

Hey! So where are these links to these infamous pictures of yours? ;)

By the way, I hope you enjoy the newspaper article I left for you. You said you wanted it and I saved it from the trash.

Why do people keep setting up straw-man opposition arguments just to knock down?

This is not a conservative attack, not a religious attack, not a "male domination" issue and no students contacted the media.

There are many issues with which USC students have problems with Dr. Blaine, not just the fact that she put topless photos of herself on the net.

All of those contentions can be read at:
http://cardinalmartini.mu.nu/archives/175847.php

By the way - how can call for stopping the objectification of women and then post topless photos of yourself to get comments regarding your aesthetic values? Just a thought.

Zel,

Complicit: associated with or participating in a questionable act or a crime.

OK -- so what's your point? What questionable act or crime am I associated with?

Sorry for using some common vocabulary. I thought since DYB and her ilk often speak plainly (e.g., "shitstorm" and "tits") that I was reaching out to them. What I did instead was give you the easy chance to avoid my questions yet again, allowing you to show that you are more interested in rhetoric than stopping rapists; that you are complicit in DYB's enabling of rape at USC through her silence. What a sham the lot of you are.

We have so much in common, professor!

Like yourself, I am a staunch feminist. Even though you and I were born in the latter half of the 20th century, we have each been oppressed for thousands of years.

(I'm not sure how that could be chronologically possible, but time and space are no match for the Patriarchy...)

I also like to assert my right to flop-out my titties in public whenever I wish while having the men I don't like jailed for daring to look at them. (Visual-rape should be an actual crime, don't you agree?)

Keep fightin' the good fight!

I love your "boring lecture" even more than your breasts!

Dr. Diana,
I got here via bitch phd; thanks for the lecture. We still seen to need these lectures, for some reason. I have not seen the titillating pix but I wonder: if you had one of your breasts removed due to cancer or injury and, in the interest of " embrac(ing)healthy sexuality, an acceptance and celebration of the (imperfect) female body, an insistence upon self-determination, and a healing of the mind/body split" you posted pictures of yourself, how would this brouhaha have developed differently? (Sorry about the titillation comment, but sometimes I can't help myself: heh.)

Dr. Diana,
Do not let the bastards get you down. Bare breasts are nothing to be ashamed of.

Doug

PS Where do I sign up for some of those naked lady lectures?

To paraphrase Wilde: "the only thing worse than posting nude pictures of yourself on the internet that everyone wants to see is posting nude pictures of yourself on the internet that noone wants to see." You hit a homerun--everyone wants to see your pics!

I'm a member of your fan club now, that's for sure. What a well-written, well-reasoned response to what was essentially a bunch of spoiled jerks trying to tattle on you...bah to them! I wish your detractors could be half as eloquent.

i have to wonder, don't people have something better to do than to worry about this womans "topless" pics.

Saw you on Channel 4 news this evening.
Cary Berglund kept referring to you as 'Dr. Blaire.' Perhaps he couldn't think straight because he was staring at your boobs!
It's a university instructor's job to provoke...and you do your job to the fullest!
Keep up the good fight and someday we men will understand the errors of our ways and stop treating women like second class citizens.

"It's a university instructor's job to provoke"

Ummm...no it's not. That's advocacy, which is much different than academics...which are intended to be exercised at an academy. It's an instructor's job to teach.

Read the reasons why we are questioning Blaine: http://cardinalmartini.mu.nu
(No - it's not just about the pictures.)

Dear Mr (Ms?) Chairman,

You're probably right. I just wanted attention seeing as how yesterday no one knew Dr. Blaine had tits.
I suppose college students pay all those thousands of dollars in tuition to learn how to regurgitate "instruction" as opposed to learning how to think on their own through provocative, artistic discussion. You might be thinking of those left-brained math majors.
But hey, thanks for using MY post to promote your own web site. Perhaps you should try showing YOUR privates on the news!!

Dear Dr. Diana,

I arrived here via bitchphd.

Let me add my support to you.

Any objection to your blog clearly a nonsensical immature distraction about "teh horrible FILTHY TITTIES ON TEH INTERNETS!!!!11" (in the parlance of our time).

In the meantime, as you quite correctly point out - Americans and Iraqis continue to be maimed and killed in the ongoing war.

Which is the greater scandal? It is a difference not only in degree but also in sign.

"...advocacy, which is much different than academics...which are intended to be exercised at an academy. It's an instructor's job to teach."

Man are you a waste of your tuition.

Dear Dr. Di
I'm also here through bitchphd.
Your posts are fantastic, but the trolls- ugh. The positive is that their inane comments and the brohaha caused by a set of tits just prove how much you are a needed voice. Thanks.

Are you mad! I just saw the photo from Burning Man. That kind of tan is so damaging to your skin, and leads to an increased chance of skin cancer, specially if your breasts are not used to the exposure. Next time, please use extra added sunblock.

PS. Good job on the tv show.

I came here from bitchphd, just to see what the fuss was about.
I don’t like to comment on blogs, I like to read them, gain what information and knowledge I can, and then move on. But after reading your post, following the links the tolls/conservative students left, and reading the news I had to respond.
I want you to know that I think that what you are doing (and reading the back story it seems that your really being targeted for speaking out about a culture of rape) is very important, and that many many people out here appreciate what you are doing to make the world a better place for all people (male and female alike).
That’s just one man’s opinion, but it seemed important to share.
Best of luck to you,
Aaron

A tired Dr. Blaine, with lots going on personally and professionally just now, thanks you with real gratitude for speaking up.

It is because of people like you that I know that men are capable of true excellence. I do not believe the anti-feminist propaganda that we must expect less of men, nor do I believe our culture of rape is inevitable. And yes, it is why I spoke up and speak up, even though I am catching such bile--being called a dumbass for crying out loud--from people who purport to offer a better vision.

It is so important that you shared, Aaron. I am human, and can definitely use the support just now. But while wearied, I am unbowed.

Read the reasons why we are questioning Blaine: ">http://cardinalmartini.mu.nu

Were there actual reasons in there? All I saw was sheep-like Horowitz imitations, logic a clever sixth-grader could have picked apart, and a huge dose of whining entitlement.

Dr. Blaine:

As a progressive Black man, a supporter of feminism, and a thinking sex-positive radical, I can only say a hearty THANK YOU for having the ovaries to stand up for not just rape victims, but also for free personal expression and academic freedom...as well as facing down those Puritan right-wingnuts who would cast such dispersions on you for not hating your body as they think you should.

I may have some slight disagreements about the theory about the "culture of rape" amongst men (I consider it as much a byproduct of the institutionalization of antisex and Puritanical attitudes as it is part of the "patriarchy")...but on the fundamental principle that men have to challenge and root out the sexism that is far too tolerated in our culture; I am in absolute total agreement.

Also..I find it quite fascinating and humorous that the "best" that your right-wing "critics" can do to smear you is to either quote just-so straw stories about "all sex is rape/all men are rapists" (and NO, Chairman, I do NOT feel the need to read your website, since all these claims are simply old news put out by antifeminists who just can't get it into their heads that women are assaulted) or use your own topless pictures to paint you as somehow a hypocritical "slut". If this is the best that "conservatives" can offer for academic debate, then we are in a sad, sad state indeed.

This is my first visit discovering your blog (strangely enough, through a post in Nina Hartley's forum and through an article from AVN (the adult industry trade magazine))....but after reading through your writings, I guarantee it won't be the last.

A sincere thanks from me for being the no-nonsense butt-kicking feminist you are....and FIGHT ON!!!

Anthony Kennerson
Lafayette, LA
http://redgarterclubwebsite.net
http://ajk-sdchron-sexposleftist.blogspot.com

Crazy religious moron:
http://www.break.com/index/hannityloon.html

URL is for my page on image of librarians in porn. Spoke about it Popular Culture Assn conference back in 90, and web shows some of my notes, not really a paper.

Anyway, to your channel 4 story...when exited that page of the video, it took me to a good sexist ad, full page, of headless woman in bikini as part of an ad for laser hair removal. Somehow it seemed appropriate. But she was in a bikini, so no boobs showing, so guess that made it all ok. Right? Whatever.

dan (professor also)

Anthony

I think you need to chat with Lucky Nickel:

http://www.feminista.com/issues/
On Sex Positiveness

Sex Positive! What a great new buzz word to start off the millenium!

The first time I heard the words were in regards to Radical feminism. A "Sex Positive Radical Feminist." Well by Goddess, I'm a Radical feminist!

And because I am, I started to get a tickle in my head. I don't know, maybe it was just the feather in my hat....

I looked at the words again: Sex Positive Radical Feminist. Is this some kind of new and improved Radical feminism, I wondered? And are there other kinds of Radical feminists, I puzzled? Are there Sex Neutral Radical Feminists, for example? How 'bout Sex Negative Radical Feminists? And who in the world would identify themselves by the latter two?

Color me paranoid, but I started getting a mighty bit suspicious. Just what is meant by the words "Sex Positive" and why is it being connected with Radical feminism?

I decided to hang ten on my keyboard and surf the net to see if I could find any clue as to what was considered the meaning of these words. In doing so, I stumbled upon this interesting one:

"What exactly is this thing called sex positivity? It's a public denial that sex is an ugly thing and should be hidden. It's a movement based on pleasure-as-revolution and radical self-expression. It's also a theory of social justice: the idea is that the experiences of sexual and social freedom will teach us to seek more fundamental kinds of freedom, such as economic equality."

So let me get this straight, women are just going to copulate their way into equality and liberation?! And copulating will promote social and economic freedom? Hmmmm, I wonder why no one has ever thought of this before?!

Well... probably because they have. Goodness knows humans have been having so-called sexual revolutions since the beginning of time. Because I'm pretty sure humans have been having sex since the beginning of time. In fact, the last time society had a so-called sexual revolution wasn't all that long ago. Unless the 1960's are considered a "long time ago." As I remember it, people were waving the same banners. It was considered radical and revolutionary. And women were supposed to be liberated and freed by it.

But that's not what happened. What it did was allow men free and easy access to sex without that real drag of protocol, courtship and responsibility. The same old thing still occurred for women though. Women got pregnant. Women had babies. Women were still expected to take care of the children, do the household chores and wash men's streaked underwear. Women were still expected to take a back seat to men, and were denied leadership and any kind of important roles. Well then, just who exactly did this liberate and free? Well it sure wasn't women!

It didn't take women too long to figure out that they had been conned.

But time and time again, women's history and their lessons learned are erased and forgotten. As a result, each new generation of women is conned into thinking that they are discovering sex as something new. All each generation winds up doing is re-inventing the wheel once again and discovering the same old hard lessons that countless generations of women before them have found out. The benefits of these Sexual Revolutions and Sex Positive movements were never meant to benefit women or to free or liberate them. They were designed to allow men free access to women's bodies while still retaining their male privilege and benefits and positions of power and dominance granted to them under the patriarchy.

I next stumbled upon this quite detailed definition of "Sex Positive":

"Generally speaking, 'Sex Positive' means rejecting the dominant view of sex as somehow something shameful (especially for women), and embracing any and all consensual sex practices between one, two, or more adults as healthy, and without needing apology, justification, and (for some) social contextualization. Rejecting the accumulated cultural baggage the surrounds it, and enjoying sex for what it is, however you do it, with whomever you do it. It means looking at the diversity of sexual practices..... including homo/bisexuality, genital-to-genital, oral, anal, digital to genital/anus, S/M, B/D, the spectrum of fetishes to be found among humans, the use of sex toys, masturbation, group sex involving any or all of the above, et al.... as being positive and not feeling that one need be ashamed of any consensual sexual practices between adults."

Ok. Think I got it! Sex Positive means anything consensually sexual goes, as long as orgasm is the aim. And if women can just get with the program, and get rid of all that darn shame that just ruins everything, by gawd, women will be so much freer and better off. And, and, and... Hold on right there!

Hmmm....

Just why does this look like a fantasy come true for men, rather than for women? Just why was "especially for women" put in parentheses? Does this imply that somehow women have the "wrong" and/or a "negative" attitude about sex? Wrong and negative to whom?

I had an "ah ha" moment. "Now I'm getting to bottom of it all," I thought. It can only be considered wrong and negative by men. It is once again men's standard women are being held up to and compared to. It is being viewed that apparently men have their act together in the sex department and women do not. "Well why isn't it the other way around," I pondered? Why isn't it that women have their act together, and it's men that have gone overboard?

So I turned to Germaine Greer to see what her take was on all of this. From "The Whole Woman" I spied this excerpt:

"This insidious process was floated on the lie of the sexual revolution. Along with the spurious equality and flirty femininity we were sold sexual "freedom." One man's sexual freedom is another man's -- or woman's or child's -- sexual thraldom. The first tenet of sexual freedom is that any kind of bizarre behavior is legitimate if the aim is orgasm. Men who nail each other's foreskins to breadboards are not to be criticized or ridiculed, still less humiliated or punished. An individual who get his kicks by shoving live hamsters into his rectum must not be reviled, though he may be prosecuted for cruelty to animals. Political correctness forbids me to identify such a paraphilliac as male, but if he turns out to be female I'll eat the hamster.

The sexuality that has been freed is male sexuality which is fixated on penetration. Penetration equals domination in the animal world and therefore in the unregenerate human world which is part of it. The penetrated, regardless of sex, cannot rule, OK? Not in prison, not in the army, not in business, not in the suburbs. The person on the receiving end is -- fucked, finished, unserviceable, degraded. Not actually, you understand, but figuratively, which, language being a metaphor, is what counts. When a male soldier calls a female soldier a split, he identifies her as a fuckee and asserts his dominance over her. Penetration has but little to do with love and even less with esteem. In the last third of the twentieth century more women were penetrated deeper and more often than in any preceding era. The result in Britain is epidemic rates of chlamydia, genital warts and herpes, especially in women aged between sixteen and nineteen, together with a rate of teen pregnancy second only to that of the U.S. What the penis could not accomplish was done for it by the outsize dildo and the fist, the speculum and the cannula. If penetration was the point, it certainly got made."

Guess I'm not the only one that sees through this farce of "sexual revolution" and so called "liberation" and knows to call it anything but freeing and liberating for women, nor does it allow women to emerge with political, economic, social or cultural equality with men. In fact, it does the opposite and is harmful to feminism by suggesting that feminism is centered around the sexual liberation of women rather than the eradication of institutionalized sexism and hierarchies based on sex.

Although the main center and focus of Radical feminism is to go to the root oppression of women and to question gender roles and distinguish between biologically-determined behavior and culturally-determined behavior of men and women, Radical feminism also emphasizes sexual and reproductive exploitation of women. It is in this sexual and reproductive exploitation of women that we find much of the root cause of male domination and men gaining from women's subordination. And we know this condition to be one that cuts across class and race as well as cultures and national boundaries.

Of course I am also aware of the critics of Radical feminism. Radical feminists take a lot of heat for their stance on pornography and thus, sex in general. Oh, I think I've about heard it all. Radical feminists are prudes, Victorian, against sex, hate sex, hate men, yada, yada, yada.

But Radical analysis and critique have never stemmed from a "moral" position. In her critique and analysis of sex positiveness, specifically pornography, Catharine MacKinnon in "Feminism Unmodified" asserts that there are 5 cardinal dimensions of a liberal defensive edifice. They are: Individualism, Naturalism, Voluntarism, Idealism, and Moralism.

"It starts with the idea that people, even people who as a group are poor and powerless, do what they do voluntarily, so that women who pose for Playboy are there by their own free will. Forget the realities of women's sexual/economic situation. When women express our free will, we spread our legs for a camera.

Implicit here, too, is the idea that a natural physical body exists, prior to its social construction through being viewed, which can be captured and photographed, even or especially, when "attractively posed" -- that's a quote from the Playboy Philosophy. Then we are told that to criticize this is to criticize "ideas," not what is being done either to the women in the magazine or to women in society as a whole. Any critique of what is done is then cast as a moral critique, which, as liberals know, can involve only opinions or ideas, not facts about life. This entire defensive edifice, illogical as it may seem, relies utterly coherently on the five cardinal dimensions of liberalism; individualism, naturalism, voluntarism, idealism, and moralism. I mean: members of groups who have no choice but to live life as members of groups are taken as if they are unique individuals; the social characteristics are then reduced to natural characteristics; preclusion of choices becomes free will; material reality is turned into "ideas about" reality; and concrete positions of power and powerlessness are transformed into relative value judgements, as to which reasonable people can form different but equally valid preferences.

What I have just described is the ideological defense of pornography. Given the consequences for women of this formal theoretical structure, consequences that we live out daily as social inequality (not to mention its inherent blame-the-victim posture), I do not think that it can be said the liberal feminism is feminist. What it is, is liberalism applied to women."

In conclusion, the Radical feminist critique of sex postiveness has nothing to do with sex or individuals' attitudes about sex. It's about hierarchies and the power differentials between those that have power and those that have been disenfranchised of that power by patriarchal construction based on sex and ideas on sexuality and how those ideas naturalize, legitimize, and perpetuate institutionalized sexism and violence against women. Many of which can be applied to racism as well.

Sex-Positive? A new buzz word to start off the millenium? Hardly. It's nothing more than the same old, same old. Patriarchally constructed gender roles and sexual exploitation of women wrapped up in cleverly disguised new packaging (which isn't even new), in order to maintain the status quo of male dominance which is designed to further enhance their sexual freedoms and obfuscate their violence towards women.

________________________________________

The Whole Woman, Ed. Germaine Greer., Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1999, p. 10

"Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life & Law, Ed. Catherine MacKinnon., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 136

Another reader referred here by Bitch. I agree 100% with Chris Clarke and Aaron's comment above--your detractors' web site is so suffused with entitlement and feeble logic that they would really do a better job furthering their argument by remaining silent.

This "boring lecture" is fantastic. Keep up the good work. Sorry you have to deal with such enervating nonsense.

Pony...

No thank you, I've already seen and heard enough of MacKinnon and the sex-fascists-pretending-to-be-feminists known as Feminista! I prefer Dr. Blaine's (and Nina Hartley's and Susie Bright's) brand of feminism much better, thank you very much.

But..to each his/her own.

Anthony

Did you not say you don't agree with Dr. Blaine's rape culture analysis?

You prefer...

Sounds to me like you prefer women fight against each other. Does that turn you on Anthony?

Here you are, two posts in on a feminist board waving your male entitlement around.

Feh.

Uhhh, no, Pony..I said that I did not agree with SOME analysis of "rape culture" theory.....I did also say, though, that much of what she says I did indeed agree with.

And please tell me where in my post did I ever say anything about "male entitlement"?? Was it here:

I may have some slight disagreements about the theory about the "culture of rape" amongst men (I consider it as much a byproduct of the institutionalization of antisex and Puritanical attitudes as it is part of the "patriarchy")...but on the fundamental principle that men have to challenge and root out the sexism that is far too tolerated in our culture; I am in absolute total agreement.

Freud and the Fundamentalist Urge
By MARK EDMUNDSON
To most of us, Sigmund Freud, who was born 150 years ago next Saturday, is known chiefly as a provocative and highly controversial student of individual psychology. He is the man who theorized the unconscious and the Oedipus complex. What is less well known — and now perhaps more important — is that Freud devoted the final, and maybe most fruitful, phase of his career to reflections on culture and politics. In his later work, Freud brought forward striking ideas about the inner dynamics of political life in general and of tyranny in particular.
Adolf Hitler, who rolled into Freud's home city of Vienna on March 14, 1938, preceded by thousands of troops, was no surprise to Sigmund Freud. Nor would the many forms of tyrannical fundamentalism that have grown up in Hitler's wake and have extended into the 21st century have shocked him very much. In books like "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego" and "Totem and Taboo," Freud predicted Hitler and his descendants almost perfectly. Now, in an age threatened by fundamentalisms of many sorts, Freud's thinking may be more usefully illuminating than ever before.
It is possible that Hitler and Freud actually encountered each other. Hitler spent some of the unhappiest years of his life in Vienna, just before the beginning of World War I. He had come to the great city with hope of becoming a major artist, but he was rejected from art school, not once but twice. In short order, he ran out of money and was reduced to sleeping in doorways and even to begging from time to time. If Hitler and Freud had passed each other on the streets of Vienna, after Freud's return from his highly successful 1909 trip to America, Freud would have seen a street rat, a rank denizen of the mob. (Freud was no populist.) Hitler would have seen a Viennese burgher (he despised the upper middle class) and probably would have identified Freud as a Jew as well. Hitler would perhaps have drawn back in shame at his threadbare overcoat and his broken shoes. Though he might, if things were bad enough, have extended his hand to beg. Whether Freud gave or not (he could well have; he was generally good-hearted) would have made no difference; the encounter would still have left young Adolf seething.
In March 1938, the street rat was back, in full dress uniform, riding through the center of Vienna in an open-topped Mercedes, holding onto the windshield with his left hand and with his right giving the salute to thousands of Viennese citizens, greeting the absorption of their small country into the Reich with howls of joy. ("Finis Austriae," Freud wrote in his diary that March.) Now Hitler was in robust middle age; Sigmund Freud was 81 and desperately ill with the cancer of the jaw that would, in London, a year and a half later, end his life.
Freud, sick as he was during the early spring of 1938, generally refused to take any medication stronger than aspirin. He wanted to think and to write, and for that he needed to keep his mind clear. He stayed away from morphine and from liquor. But staying away from intoxicants and keeping his mind clear meant more than that to Freud. It meant staying away from religion (Freud was a lifelong atheist); it meant staying away from romantic love (Freud called it "the overestimation of the erotic object") and it meant staying away from the kind of politics embodied by the onetime street rat now traversing Vienna in his Mercedes. Why were people so potently and ruinously drawn to Hitler and to all of the other agents of collective intoxication on offer in the world? Freud believed that he knew.
At the center of Freud's work lies a fundamental perception: human beings are not generally unified creatures. Our psyches are not whole, but divided into parts, and those parts are usually in conflict with one another. The id, or the "it," is an agent of pure desire: it wants and wants and does not readily take no for an answer. The superego, or over-I, is the internal agent of authority. It often looks harshly upon the id and its manifold wants. The superego, in fact, frequently punishes the self simply for wishing for forbidden things, even if the self does not act on those wishes at all. Then there is the ego, trying to broker between the it and the over-I, and doing so with the greatest of difficulty, in part because both agencies tend to operate outside the circle of the ego's awareness. The over-I and the it often function unconsciously. Add to this problem the fact that "the poor ego," as Freud often calls it, must navigate a frequently hostile outside world, and it is easy to see how, for Freud, life is best defined as ongoing conflict. In a passage in "The Ego and the Id," Freud observes that the ego is a "poor creature owing service to three masters and consequently menaced by three dangers: from the external world, from the libido of the id and from the severity of the superego. Three kinds of anxiety correspond to these three dangers, since anxiety is the expression of a retreat from danger."
About this conflict — about this painful anxiety — what is to be done? Humanity, Freud says, has come up with many different solutions to the problem of internal conflict and the pain it inevitably brings. Most of these solutions, Freud thinks, are best described as forms of intoxication. What the intoxicants in question generally do is to revise the superego to make it more bearable. We like to have one glass of wine, then two, Freud suggests, because for some reason — he's not quite sure what it is in scientific terms — alcohol relaxes the demands of the over-I. Falling in love, Freud (and a thousand or so years of Western poetry) attests, has a similar effect. Love — romantic love, the full-out passionate variety — allows the ego to be dominated by the wishes and judgment of the beloved, not by the wishes of the demanding over-I. The beloved supplants the over-I, at least for a while, and, if all is going well, sheds glorious approval on the beloved and so creates a feeling of almost magical well-being. Take a drink (or two), take a lover, and suddenly the internal conflict in the psyche calms down. A divided being becomes a whole, united and (temporarily) happier one.
Freud had no compunction in calling the relationship that crowds forge with an absolute leader an erotic one. (In this he was seconded by Hitler, who suggested that in his speeches he made love to the German masses.) What happens when members of the crowd are "hypnotized" (that is the word Freud uses) by a tyrant? The tyrant takes the place of the over-I, and for a variety of reasons, he stays there. What he offers to individuals is a new, psychological dispensation. Where the individual superego is inconsistent and often inaccessible because it is unconscious, the collective superego, the leader, is clear and absolute in his values. By promulgating one code — one fundamental way of being — he wipes away the differences between different people, with different codes and different values, which are a source of anxiety to the psyche. Now we all love the fatherland, believe in the folk, blame the Jews, have a grand imperial destiny. The tyrant is also, in his way, permissive. Where the original superego has prohibited violence and theft and destruction, the new superego, the leader, allows for it, albeit under prescribed circumstances. Freud's major insistence as a theorist of group behavior is on the centrality of the leader and the dynamics of his relation to the group. In this he sees himself as pressing beyond the thinking of predecessors like the French writer Gustave Le Bon, who, to Freud's way of thinking, overemphasized the determining power of the group mind. To Freud, crowds on their own can be dangerous, but they only constitute a long-term brutal threat when a certain sort of figure takes over the superego slot in ways that are both prohibitive and permissive.
As the Nazis arrived in Vienna, many gentile Viennese, who had apparently been tolerant and cosmopolitan people, turned on their Jewish neighbors. They broke into Jewish apartments and stole what they wanted to. They trashed Jewish shops. They made Jews scrub liberal political slogans off the sidewalk, first with brushes and later with their hands. And they did all of this with a sense of righteous conviction — they were operating in accord with the new cultural superego, epitomized by the former corporal and dispatch runner, Adolf Hitler.
On the day after Hitler arrived in Vienna, a gang of Nazis stormed into Freud's apartment, at 19 Berggasse. They ransacked the place and made off with a fairly large sum of money. ("I never got so much for a single session," Freud, never at a loss, observed.) They only left, it is said, when the old man, trembling and frail, appeared from out of his consulting room and fixed them in his long-practiced stare. The Nazis, the story continues, scrambled for the door.

In his last days, Freud became increasingly concerned about our longing for inner peace — our longing, in particular, to replace our old, inconsistent and often inscrutable over-I with something clearer, simpler and ultimately more permissive. We want a strong man with a simple doctrine that accounts for our sufferings, identifies our enemies, focuses our energies and gives us, more enduringly than wine or even love, a sense of being whole. This man, as Freud says in his great book on politics, "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego," must appear completely masterful. He must seem to have perfect confidence, to need no one and to be entirely sufficient unto himself. Sometimes this man will evoke a god as his source of authority, sometimes not. But in whatever form he comes — whether he is called Hitler, Stalin, Mao — he will promise to deliver people from their confusion and to dispense unity and purpose where before there were only fracture and incessant anxiety. But, of course, the price is likely to be high, because the simplifications the great man offers will almost inevitably involve hatred and violence.
Freud's implicit morality is counterintuitive. Though Freud acknowledged the uses of mild intoxicants like love and art, he was nonetheless extremely suspicious of any doctrine or activity that promised to unify the psyche — or to unify the nation, the people — without remainder and to do so forever. Freud believed that the inner tensions that we experience are by and large necessary tensions, not because they are so enjoyable in themselves — they are not — but because the alternatives to them are so much worse. For Freud, a healthy psyche is not always a psyche that feels good. For Herbert Marcuse, author of a brilliant meditation on Freud, "Eros and Civilization," Freud's politics are potentially the politics of ecstasy. We can collectively undo our repressions and regress toward collective erotic bliss. For Philip Rieff, author of the equally perceptive and original "Freud: The Mind of the Moralist," Freud appears to be a deep political pessimist who thinks that the healthiest individuals will probably be those who turn completely away from politics. But another way to look at Freud is to see him as someone who suggests that a considerable measure of freedom and even relative happiness can come from following a self-aware middle way. If we are willing to live with some inner tension, political as well as personal, we need never be overwhelmed by tyranny or fall into the anarchy that giving into the unconscious completely can bring.
For Freud, we might infer, a healthy body politic is one that allows for a good deal of continuing tension. A healthy polis is one that it doesn't always feel good to be a part of. There's too much argument, controversy, difference. But in that difference, annoying and difficult as it may be, lies the community's well-being. When a relatively free nation is threatened by terrorists with totalitarian goals, as ours is now, there is, of course, an urge to come together and to fight back by any means necessary. But the danger is that in fighting back we will become just as fierce, monolithic and, in the worst sense, as unified as our foes. We will seek our own great man; we will be blind to his foibles; we will stop questioning, stop arguing. When that happens, a war of fundamentalisms has begun, and of that war there can be no victor.
Mark Edmundson teaches English at the University of Virginia. He is currently completing a book about the last two years of Freud's life.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Uhhh, no, Pony..I said that I did not agree with SOME analysis of "rape culture" theory.....I did also say, though, that much of what she says I did indeed agree with.

And please tell me where in my post did I ever say anything about "male entitlement"?? Was it here:

I may have some slight disagreements about the theory about the "culture of rape" amongst men (I consider it as much a byproduct of the institutionalization of antisex and Puritanical attitudes as it is part of the "patriarchy")...but on the fundamental principle that men have to challenge and root out the sexism that is far too tolerated in our culture; I am in absolute total agreement.

And no, I am not too fond of women (or men, for that matter) fighting each other. Considering the article you posted slamming critics of "radical feminism" as traitors to their gender, perhaps you should look in the mirror and ask that question to yourself.

I'd love to stay and elaborate further..but it's not my blog, and I'd rather spare Dr. Blaine the waste of her bandwidth.

Anthony

All your efforts at smear have been anticipated by Luckynkl in her brilliant essay which you deigned to read before you posted.

Nice try, Pony..but I did read her post, as well as the original "Sex-positive = male abuse" article that appeared in Feminista! some years back. That's why it smells...errrr, sounds....so familiar.

And the only "smears" that I am attempting is to praise Dr. Blaine for her courage in fighting against the wingnutters who would smear her.

Funny, but I don't see you doing any such thing.

BTW...you do know that Dr. Blaine lists in her bio on 'Things She Keeps On Her Bookshelf" a book called "The Ethical Slut" (by Catherine Lizst and Dossie Easton), as well as a book by Tristan Taormino (sex educator and feminist who just released a major adult video extolling the wonders of anal sex called "House of Ass". Knowing that, will you be condemning her as an evil male-identified enabler, too??

I rest my case. You have a wonderful rest of the day.

Anthony

You just don't get it Anthony. You want some kind of shitstorm between women. It is a question of patriarchal power that offends, not any individual woman. You see, I don't say I'd rather this feminist than that. You do, and did.

I am a radical feminist, as is Luckynkl who made no such disparaging remarks about her sisters as you attribute to her.

I am a radical feminist. I am my sister, my sister is me.

You are the patriarchy.

also got here via bitchphd. and I will be back!

I love your position on this entire brouhaha, especially your description of the class you taught on the issue:

"I know the class worked well, because I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned much myself. And the students were just amazing. Their insights blew me away time and time again. Sometimes a class just works. This was one of those classes."

it is every inspiring to see a teacher/professor impassioned by current events (especially when personal!!) and incorporate them into a class to perfectly illustrate a point. well done.

Excellent analysis . . . some extremely valid points regarding the manufacture of scandal. Obviously the media was manipulated and attempted to manipulate. The images in question aren't even particularly worthy of all that much comment . . . the poor school teacher who was fired for appearing in adult films prior to her employment seems far more tittilating fare (I also think she has been reamed in this regard). However, the issue is far from over as it has ramifications that stretch beyond one teacher and one school . . . despite it being relatively tame fare. Brian (also a professor)

Oh . . . I forgot to add one more very important point regarding this post's subject . . . lectures from naked ladies are never boring. :-) Brian

Wrong again, Pony...

I am a simple working-class Black man who happens to support Dr. Blaine's efforts in educating people on the issue of rape. I'm not the one throwing out long essays and baiting others, now am I???

BTW..when will you answer my question about Dr. Blaine's sex-positive opinions?? Wouldn't that by definition make her part of "the patriarchy", too??? Or is that exclusively for progressive sympathizers like me??

It's not my shitstorm, ma'am..especially since you brought the shit and the fan to begin with.

C'est finis.

Anthony

Dr. Blaine, thanks for the entertainment. I'm very sorry that you're going through emotional turmoil over this, but man, this is EXACTLY why I'm still able to laugh about extremist social conservatism. They have nothing better to do than stare at tits and then complain about it!

So thanks for making me smile, because otherwise I'd cry.

Pony: you're not MY sister. And I'm a woman. A... wait for it... sex-positive woman. Who likes good porn, and doesn't think that *good* porn is demeaning to women. And in ANY case, Dr. Blaine's case isn't one of porn.

Please, for the love of all that is holy to you, don't speak for womankind. Especially not if you're going to proceed to be stunningly insulting to those who disagree with you.

Golly gee! Pictures of actual human female breasts. How shocking!

What a tempest in a teapot. If you travel to Australia, Brazil, or almost any country in western Europe and head to the beach, you generally find that a good many of them are "top optional". These exists without phony outcries of moral indignation or Beevis and Butthead level giggling.

If these USC students spent less time web-surfing for pictures of naked women and adopted a more enlightened attitude towards women, they might be able to get real girlfriends (as opposed to pixelated or inflated ones).

Go Dr. Diana! Just hopped in from Bitch PhD. You are an inspiration. Keep it up! It looks like those attempting to attack you are just whipping out the same rhetorical duplicity that you see after someone's taken and Introduction to Logic Class and then walk around thinking they've been given the Magic Wand To Win Any Argument R0xxors! Hah! It's satisfying to see that reactionaries of this sort are getting more and more pitiful as the years pass.

Vika

I am absolutely in agreement with you about the positive aspects of sex. You may be interested to know, contrary to popular belief, sex just gets better and better as you get older. Now approaching my 7th decade, I find sex THE most important aspect of my life.

In solidarity

Religious wacko redux.

http://www.m90.org/index.php?id=15649

"In a patriarchy all commodified sexual imagery is exploitative, which condition relies entirely on patriarchy’s having previously commodified women generally. In other words, if this were a society in which women’s humanity were not a matter of debate, pornography could not exist. If women are not the sex class, women’s sexploitation cannot take place.

Though they delude themselves that their titillation does not depend on the humiliation of subordinate beings, men vehemently and almost universally disagree with the aforementioned hypothesis. That’s because they are empirically aware that prurience and dominance are central to the male experience, and cannot imagine a world without it. They insist that patriarchy can never be abolished to the extent I advocate. Their identities are so closely linked to the sexploitation of an underclass that they believe the overthrow of patriarchy is tantamount to their own castration." -- I Blame The Patriarchy

So which is it, Anthony? Are women human in your view or not? If you do view women as human, and not as a sex class, then you have no argument.

"Intercourse is a political institution. As Andrea Dworkin said, “If we’re not willing to look at intercourse as a political institution, that is directly related to the ways in which we are socialized to accept our inferior status, and one of the ways in which we are controlled, we are not ever going to get to the roots of the ways in which male dominance works, in our lives. The fact of the matter is that the basic premise about women is that we are born to be fucked. That is it.

Now that means a lot of things. For a lot of years it meant that marriage was outright ownership of a woman’s body and intercourse was a right of marriage. That meant that intercourse was, per se, an act of force. Because the power of the state mandated that the woman accept intercourse. She belonged to the man. The cultural remnants of this is that in our society, men experience intercourse as possession of women. The culture talks about intercourse as conquering women. Women surrendering. Women being taken. We are looking at a paradigm for rape. Not at a paradigm for reciprocity, for equality, for mutuality or for freedom.

The question is what comes first? Men’s need to get laid? Or women’s dignity? And I am telling you that you cannot separate the so-called abuses of women from the so-called normal uses of women. The history of women in the world as sexual chattel, makes it impossible to do that.”

We need to understand how male violence works. That’s one of the reasons that studying pornography and fighting the pornography industry is so important. Because that’s the pentagon. That’s the war room. They train the soldiers. Then the soldiers go out and do the actions on us. We’re the population that the war is against.

We have to stop it from happening. Because, otherwise, we accept that our condition is one in which the rape of women is normal. Brutality towards women is normal.

In the United States, violence against women is a major pastime. It is a sport. It is an amusement. It is a mainstream cultural entertainment. And it is real. It is pervasive. It is epidemic. It saturates the society. It’s very hard to make anyone notice it, because there is so much of it. But the fact of the matter is, that if you live in a society that is saturated with this kind of woman hating, you live in a society that has marked you as a target for rape, for battery, for prostitution or for death.” -- Andrea Dworkin

"Men do violence and women have violence done to them. And that is the choice men face. They either do the violence or become like a woman and have the violence done to them. Men are distinguished from women by their commitment to do violence rather than be victimized by it. So boys grow up to want to be men, because it's better to be a man in this polarized sexed society of distored caricatures which gives men power, benefit and privilege. Girls would choose the same if they could. Even the most nurturing and gentle of men benefit from the violence that other men do. To sustain the whole system of power. Not only are men afraid to lose power politically, economically social, domestic and cultural, but more importantly, if all things were equal, they would not be the center of the universe. And that is a big deal for those use to it." -- Prof. Valerie Bryson

I'm no prude when it comes to nudity; but your tits should remain hidden.

Just nasty.

P.S. Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth about men. -- John Stoltenberg

I hadn't read the Stoltenberg quote before. Thanks for posting it.

"In the United States, violence against women is a major pastime. It is a sport. It is an amusement. It is a mainstream cultural entertainment. And it is real. It is pervasive. It is epidemic. It saturates the society."

In Canada too. This week, another prostitute was murdered in my province, one of over 80 unsolved prostitute murders. Finally, there will be an investigation into serial murders. Three weeks ago a police dept took the unprecedented step of showing stills from a pornography video off a porn website. They took the 7 year old girl out of the rape scene, just showing his back, facing a door. She had been between him and the door. Two other stills showed his face. Coming. It is the most sickening but necessary photography I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot having worked once as a newspaper photog.

Of course rape is connected to pornography. Of course it is not sex.

Thanks for your posts.

Pony,

"Of course rape is connected to pornography."

I actually agree with this. But the following statements, as far as I'm concerned, are different from the above, and UNtrue:

- ALL rape is connected to pornography;
- ALL pornography promotes rape, the patriarchy, what have you;
- ALL pornography disempowers women.

Talking about how "pornography is bad" is like talking about how "men are bad". Men are not All Bad. Some strata of society may be badder than others, where misogyny is concerned. But in no social group are all men evil violent rapists. And, I would contend, in any group of men there will always be a subset who wouldn't even THINK of condoning the evil done to so many women.

So also with porn.